Are you compelled to be a copywriter?

We’ll teach you how to turn your words into ideas.

Copywriting, or writing "copy" (ad speak for "words"), isn't just writing all damn day. An advertising copywriter does so much more than all those wordsmaxxing manosphere copywriter-wannabes on TikTok who just write emails and landing pages and little things like that. Advertising copywriters get to build the stories behind big, conceptual brand campaigns — the stuff you see on TV, out in the real world, on your phone when you’re trying to escape the real world, and anywhere else a story can be told. And here at DAD you'll build a portfolio that proves you can do all of those things and make you a hell of a lot more hireable than you are right now.

It's time for less theory and more making.

DAD isn't just more of what you had in college. Here you get real creative briefs, working-industry teachers, constant feedback, all in an ad agency environment.

$27,000

5 QUARTERS

15 MONTHS

FULL-TIME

DENVER OR ONLINE

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What the hell does a copywriter do?

Yep, you'll write. A lot. The usual stuff like headlines, taglines, commercial scripts, etc. But the writing is usually the final expression of a bigger idea, which means oftentimes the bigger part of your job as a copywriter is to just think. Copywriters work with art directors to brainstorm campaigns and stunts and whatever else solves a client's problem and connects with an audience. It’s then the copywriter’s job to turn those ideas into words people actually want to read, hear, watch, share, repeat, and remember forever because ads can be catchy like that.

10 THINGS COPYWRITERS ACTUALLY GET TO DO IN AD AGENCIES:

Write a Super Bowl commercial
Name a new product
Make a brand go viral
Put words in a celebrity's mouth
Write a billboard people photograph
Invent a brand character
Go on commercial shoots
Craft a brand's personality
Dream up pop-ups + experiences
React to culture in real time

How do you
become a
copywriter?

At DAD, you don't spend 15 months studying copywriting from a distance. You get briefs, make ideas, work with art directors, get critiqued, rewrite, present, miss, hit, and do it again — until the way you think and the work in your portfolio look like someone an agency can actually hire. Basically, you do the job to get the job.

The goal isn't to look like a student copywriter.
It's to look like a real copywriter.
And you'll look legit with an industry-ready portfolio from DAD.

Things you gotta do to be hired as a copywriter:

01

Think conceptually.

Come up with ideas that are bigger than a headline.

02

Solve problems.

Use creativity to answer a business or communication challenge.

03

Write for real people.

Not professors. Not your English teacher. Actual humans.

04

Have good taste.

Know what's fresh, what's obvious, and what's been done 400 times.

05

Think visually.

Words and images should become one idea.

06

Collaborate.

Copywriters and art directors are creative partners, you're gonna need each other.

07

Take feedback.

Get less precious. Listen to your CD. Rewrite. Make the work better.

08

Present an idea.

Because eventually you have to convince someone that your idea is worth spending money on.

09

Build a portfolio.

Because eventually someone is going to ask, “Cool. What have you made?”

That's where DAD comes in.

The copy curriculum.

We pack a lot into 5 quarters and 15 months. Like a good copywriter, we’ve condensed it all below to give you the highlights of everything you’ll do and learn in our copywriting program.

Q1

Learn to think like a copywriter.

Your first few quarters at DAD are all about laying the foundation with copywriting and advertising fundamentals. Tastemakers will get you up to speed on all things art, culture, and advertising, while The Big Idea reveals the big secrets on how to come up with a great ad campaign.

The Big Idea
The Craft of Writing
Tastemakers
Playing Tag

Surprise — your job is a lot more than just writing! In an agency, copywriters are oftentimes tasked with more thinking than writing. Your entire time at DAD is balanced with classes that get you strategically concepting and classes that get you writing.

Q2

Start making campaigns.

Half your time will be spent in more foundational copywriting classes, while the other half of your time you'll start working with art director partners to develop ideas that could be blown out into full advertising campaigns later in the program.

Campaign Development
Campaign Development
Writing In Space
Copy Development

No, that's not a typo, you'll take TWO Campaign Development classes every quarter from here on out. Your first campaigns are gonna suck — and that's ok. The biggest reason we build so many reps into our curriculum is the more you make, the better you'll get.

Q3

Get stronger with reps.

Just like Q2, half copy-focused classes and half campaign classes with your AD partners. Reps, baby, reps. The expectations from your creative directors will rise just a little bit this quarter, right in line with your improving skillset.

Campaign Development
Campaign Development
Writing On Screen
Writing with Tone

Where Writing for Space and Tone focus on more traditional headlines and how they fill space and then come to life with different tones, Writing On Screen gets you writing spots (commercials) that could live on TV, streaming, Spotify, and more.

Q4

It all comes down to this.

Foundational copy classes are over — you've got what you need to succeed the rest of the way. Now it's all campaigns, all the time. The majority of your portfolio will likely come outta Q4 because as you keep getting better and better, the latest thing you've made is probably your greatest.

Campaign Development
Campaign Stunts & Social
Campaign Fire Drill
Writing for You

Two new Campaign Development classes debut this quarter, one that challenges your quick-concepting skills and another that focuses on PR stunts and social media campaigns instead of fully-integrated 360 ad campaigns.

Q5

Let's build the damn thing.

After Q4, it's pencils down. Your final portfolio projects have been selected and Q5 is entirely a production quarter to build everything from beginning to end, website and all. The goal was never to put all 60 briefs in your portfolio, it's to put the very best 6.

Campaign Assembly
Copy Tuning
The High Art of Selling
Getting a Job

In addition to producing the final work and building your websites, you'll also learn how to present that work like a pro and also how to get a job in two classes that could not be more clearly named.

Awards classes.

In addition to your curriculum above, we also run two awards classes every fall and winter that focus on the One Club and D&AD student award shows. The entire school works together, quarters intermingle, and it's extra work in addition to your regular classes but it's a lot of fun.

The Art of Winning: New Blood
The Art of Winning: Young Ones

We cover all award show entry fees and we don't cap our submissions, so every idea that we think is great will be submitted at no cost to you.

How's everything sound so far? Well, talk to your parents/friends/grade school crush/dog about it and see what they think.

START YOUR APPLICATION → OR HOW ABOUT YA TALK TO US FIRST →

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A little less school,
a lot more agency

We’re structured to be less like a school and more like a working ad agency. Why? Because all of our teachers work in agencies and that’s kinda all we know. Your friends in med school work in a teaching hospital, think of this as a teaching agency — and we’re just as important and save just as many lives. You'll work through real-world-style briefs, collaborate with art directors, present your ideas, get feedback, and make the work better.

Then you'll do it again.

And again.

Because repetition is how you get good.

The program is five quarters over 15 months, and the curriculum moves from foundational copywriting skills into increasingly sophisticated campaign development and portfolio work.

Learn from real, live copywriters.

Your instructors at DAD aren't people who just read about advertising. They’re not people who maybe worked in an ad agency in the 90s. Your instructors here are working advertising professionals. Right now. At some of the best agencies in the country. All of them.

That matters.

Because the ad industry changes quickly. The platforms change. The culture changes. The technology changes. The way people consume media changes. And your instructors are living through those changes while they're teaching you. Have you heard of AI? Yeah, we’re teaching that, too.

At DAD, you'll always get feedback from people who understand what agencies are actually looking for in junior copywriters.

FEEDBACK THAT'S LESS LIKE:

“Good job, this is
grammatically correct.”

AND MORE LIKE:

“This idea isn't
working yet. Here's
why...”

That’s the feedback that makes you better.

How much work do you actually make?

Some number that's extraordinary. Something big. Something mega. Something copious. Something capacious. Something cajunga.

Nah, but really, students can expect to work on 60 campaign briefs to varying degrees of completion before they get to Q5. Some ideas will be great. Some will be fine. And some will be so shitty you'll want to fire them into the sun. That's normal. You learn by making, and at DAD you make a shit ton for that reason.

Cut what sucks.

We aren't sentimental about portfolios. If a piece isn't good enough, we chuck it. After Q4, DAD holds a multi-day cutdown event to evaluate student work and narrow down the campaigns that deserve more time and attention. Online students from all over the country fly in to join the Denver students and together we all cut what sucks, what we like, and keep only what we love.

Then we party.

After the party, in your last quarter Q5, the work we selected gets refined over the final 10 weeks into your completed portfolio. Because here's the uncomfortable truth: More work does not mean better work. Twelve mediocre campaigns don't beat six great ones. Your portfolio should make an agency want to meet you. Not make them wonder how long it's going to take to scroll to the good stuff.

THE ONLY THING THEY ASK TO SEE.

Your
portfolio
is the point.

Agencies don’t hire junior art directors because they got good grades in college. They don't even care what your major was. They hire junior art directors whose portfolios look legit.

Over 15 months at DAD, you’ll work through up to 60 briefs, build campaigns with copywriter partners, throw away plenty of ideas, make better ones, and eventually cut everything down to the work an agency actually wants to see in a junior art director portfolio... and nothing they don't.

Agencies don't want to see college portfolios with class exercises or student awards submissions. Agencies want to see the kinda work they do every day, so when they hire you they'll know you can do it how they need it done.

We don’t make student portfolios at DAD.
We make junior art director portfolios.

So what the hell is in a legit junior copywriter portfolio?

A DAD copywriter portfolio contains six fully developed campaigns and stunts that prove you can do more than just make things sound cool. The work should show that you can find a big idea, ground it in truth, build it across channels, write in different tones, solve different kinds of problems, work with an art director, and ultimately make something people might actually give a shit about.

fling your finger wildly to scroll down and see what kinda portfolio you'll leave dad with...

↓

01 / Truth

A strategic foundation of truth.

The best campaigns connect a human truth to a brand truth, then make a bold point about why those two things belong together with a strategic insight. This is what fuels the big idea.

02 / big idea

Turn the truth into one simple creative thought.

A strong idea should be easy to explain, easy to remember and big enough to organize an entire campaign around.

03 / Legs

Make sure the idea can go somewhere.

Great campaigns are said to have legs, meaning they can go a lot of different places. Agencies want to see that you can take your story places besides traditional ads without it losing its impact. Video. Social. Experiential. Digital. Stunts. Products. Whatever makes sense for the idea.

04 / VOICE

Really make your copy sing.

Great copy needs personality. The voice you're writing in should feel distinctive, memorable, and right for the brand — not just sound like how you talk.

05 / craft

Write damn good.

You're writing a lot, so you need to write consistently well. Headlines, scripts, names, manifestos, social, long copy, short copy. All of it needs to be strong, grammatically sound, and written in a voice that supports the big idea.

06 / visual thinking

Art and copy that work together.

Great copywriters understand how art direction can strengthen the idea, vice versa, as well as how the writing should change depending on what the audience can already see.

07 / RANGE

Show them you have more than one setting.

Different brands, tones, audiences and problems. A funny fast-food campaign followed by another funny fast-food campaign followed by another funny fast-food campaign is not range. Be versatile, but never at the expense of showing your strongest work.

Wanna make work like this? Hell yeah ya do. C'mon, duder, let's get it goin'.

START YOUR APPLICATION → OR MAYBE JUST TALK TO US FIRST →

WHERE DO DAD COPYWRITERS END UP?

NEW YORK → LOS ANGELES →

CHICAGO → SAN FRANCISCO →

DENVER → AUSTIN →

EVERYWHERE ELSE

The best agencies want to hire the best talent, so they routinely come to DAD.

DAD prepares students for junior copywriter roles at advertising agencies, in-house brand teams, creative studios, and wherever else companies need creatives who can turn problems into ideas people actually care about. And because you’ve spent five quarters concepting with art directors, presenting ideas, taking creative direction, revising campaigns, and working against real briefs, your first creative department won’t feel like a completely foreign planet.

OUR FAVORITE PIECE OF FEEDBACK WE RECEIVE FROM THE AGENCIES WHO HIRE OUR GRADS:

“DAD Grads come in punching above their weight class.”

“They’re not really juniors, more like mid or senior level. They seriously come in so prepared.”

When copywriters leave DAD they go far and wide.

DAD HAS A NATIONAL FOOTPRINT, NOT A LOCAL ONE.

9

SAN FRANCISCO DAD COPYWRITERS

10

LOS ANGELES DAD COPYWRITERS

8

COLORADO DAD COPYWRITERS

11

CHICAGO DAD COPYWRITERS

14

NEW YORK CITY DAD COPYWRITERS

4

TEXAS DAD COPYWRITERS

6

THE SOUTH DAD COPYWRITERS

69 copywriters placed all over the U.S. (2020-2026) + 7 ACROSS SMALLER MARKETS / 6 WORKING REMOTE / 3 FREELANCE

DAD COPYWRITERS NOW WORK AT PLACES LIKE:

Goodby Silverstein & Partners / Wieden + Kennedy / TBWA\Chiat\Day / Ogilvy / VML / Dentsu Creative / Highdive / David&Goliath / BarkleyOKRP / Deutsch / Havas / Leo Burnett / The Martin Agency / RPA / Media Arts Lab / CP+B / Work In Progress / Cactus / Fact & Fiction / Arnold / Droga / Pereira O'Dell / Zulu Alpha Kilo / GSD&M / and more...

You're here for a good time, not a long time.

The reality is, you come to Colorado to learn for 15 months and then leave for a bigger market. You don't come to DAD because you desperately want a job within a 20-minute radius of our building, right? You come here because you want options, and that's exactly what our national agency network provides.

.

WAIT A SEC, IS AI REPLACING COPYWRITERS?

AI won’t replace you. But a human who knows how to use AI will.

There’s a special place in hell reserved for shitty copywriters at non-agencies who lean on AI to write all their copy. But while that's happening outside of our world, the great copywriters at the best agencies know we won’t be replaced any time soon because we’ve got two important things AI will never have…

01 /

HUMANITY

Copywriters have always been and will always be valuable because we’re people. And we make ads for other people. We're kinda connected like that. The robots may soon become our overlords, but they are definitely not people. Our ideas are rooted in truth, remember? The human truths that fuel our strategic thinking come from our shared lived experience as people on this planet. AI can’t touch our humanity. Hell, it can't touch anything. Robots suck, dude.

02 /

TASTE

AI predicts what words should come next, while copywriters decide what’s worth saying in the first place. We put so much more thought into what we should say, like "Why should we say it? Who needs to hear it? What do they care about? How do they want us to tell them?" AI can help you explore possibilities, for sure. It’s a great research and creative tool for copywriters. But you still need to know which possibilities are actually good. You need good taste.

AI IS OUR TOOL. HUMANS CONTROL IT.

We don’t always need AI. But AI always needs us.

AI is a net-negative for society right now, we don’t doubt that. But for us in advertising, the reality is that AI is already here and 100% normalized in agencies. Creative production has gotten faster and easier because of AI, which is great. Many agency tasks have now become automated, which has seen mixed results. Some jobs have even changed or gone away completely because of it, which is not great.

As AI grows and continues to change the world,
creative jobs should always be the safest.

Humans make art to express how we feel when we laugh, cry, ache, rage, get fucked, get fucked over, relapse, recover, mourn, get everything we wanted and still feel empty, love someone we shouldn’t, forgive, regret, feel too much, feel nothing, or feel something so complicated we haven’t even invented the right words for it yet.

Machines can learn everything we’ve made,
but they can’t live the lives that made us make it.

DENVER OR ONLINE?

Same DAD. Different house.

You can come hang at our place or yours, doesn’t matter to us. Whatever works best for you. We keep the online and Denver cohorts separate, maybe once or twice you’ll all have a class together, but ultimately you’re each on your own tracks. But those tracks are identical.

WHETHER YOU ATTEND IN DENVER OR ONLINE YOU GET THE SAME THINGS

✓ LIVE CLASSES

✓ REAL BRIEFS

✓ WORKING WITH PARTNERS

✓ LIVE FEEDBACK FROM CDs

✓ SAME DEADLINES

✓ SAME EXPECTATIONS

✓ SAME JOB PLACEMENT

✓ DAY & NIGHT CLASSES

✓ FULL-TIME COMMITMENT

Online students aren’t watching a library of prerecorded lectures at their own pace. Every single class is always live. They work with instructors, collaborate with other creatives and build their portfolios alongside the rest of their cohort just like the Denver students do.

SO, WHAT’S THE BETTER FIT FOR YOU?

01 / DENVER

Hang at our place.

Living in Colorado for 15 months sounds rad. You want to experience the mountains, the weather, the breweries, and concerts at Red Rocks. You want to not just work around other creatives, but hang out with them, too. You’ll stay late. Make friends. Get really close, really quick. Argue about ideas. Apologize and go out for drinks after class. Then you’ll argue about more ideas at the bar. You wanna be with like-minded people who care about all this shit as much as you do.

02 / ONLINE

Stay where you are.

All your favorite restaurants are close by. Your dog has a lot of really good friends in the area. Picking up and moving to another state is just too expensive and the idea of driving a Uhaul gives you night terrors. You’ll talk to all your partners and instructors all day on Zoom and you’ll love every minute of it. You’ll sometimes do class sitting at a desk. Sometimes do class lying on the couch. You’ll hopefully never do class while operating heavy machinery. Staring at a computer screen all damn day is nothing to you.

SO WHY CHOOSE DAD?

Good question. You should be asking it.

If every portfolio program promises to “launch your creative career,” eventually you have to stop comparing promises and start comparing what you’re actually getting.

HERE’S WHAT YOU’RE ACTUALLY GETTING AT DAD

#1 PORTFOLIO SCHOOL IN NORTH AMERICA

At the 2026 Young Ones, DAD’s student work made us the highest-ranked portfolio school currently operating in North America. That’s not us grading our own homework.

$27k TOTAL TUITION

A fraction of what many graduate programs cost, without spending two years getting there.

15 MONTHS

Enough time spent that you actually improve. Not so much time that school becomes your career.

60 BRIEFS

You don’t become good at ideas by studying them. You become good by making a ridiculous number of them.

LIVE in denver & online

Online students aren’t watching prerecorded lectures alone at 2 a.m. Every class is live, every critique is live, and you’re working with actual live partners.

EXPERTISE THAT YOU CAN TRUST

Your instructors are real, working ad agency creatives, so what they’re teaching is connected to what agencies are actually buying, making and hiring for right now.

EVERYTHING ABOVE HAS ONE JOB:

Make your portfolio better.

THERE ARE A LOT OF WAYS TO DO THIS.

There are schools that were founded before the digital age.

There are graduate programs 3x our price.

There are shorter, cheaper portfolio programs.

There are schools where job placement isn't a focus.

And we can challenge all of them.

DON’T TAKE OUR WORD FOR IT.

Compare us.

Tuition. Time. Teachers. Job placement. Portfolios. See how DAD stacks up against the other places you’re considering.

DAD VS. THE WORLD →

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Holy shit, you're still scrolling? Only the FAQ is left, bud. You ok?

CALL US, WE'RE WORRIED ABOUT YOU. →

FAQ

Questions? Answered.

Choosing a portfolio school is a pretty big decision. Here’s the stuff people actually want to know before they make it.

01

START HERE

What is Denver Ad School?

Denver Ad School, or DAD, is an advertising portfolio school for future copywriters and art directors. Students attend full-time either in Denver or online, work on advertising briefs with creative partners, get feedback from working industry creatives and leave with a professional portfolio built to help them compete for agency jobs.

What is a portfolio school?

A portfolio school is a career-focused creative program built around making the work you’ll actually use to get hired. Instead of spending most of your time on academic papers, exams or theory, you spend it developing ideas, responding to briefs, getting critique, working with creative partners and building a professional advertising portfolio.

Is portfolio school worth it?

Portfolio school can be worth it if your goal is to become an advertising creative and you need the structure, feedback, experience and portfolio to become competitive. You absolutely can teach yourself. What a good portfolio program gives you is experienced creative direction, deadlines, partners, dozens of briefs and repeated feedback on whether your ideas are actually getting better.

At DAD, all of that is focused on one outcome: becoming a stronger creative with a stronger portfolio.

What’s the difference between portfolio school and a master’s degree?

A master’s degree is primarily an academic credential; portfolio school is primarily professional creative training. If you want to become an advertising copywriter, agencies are generally much more interested in the ideas in your portfolio than whether you wrote a graduate thesis.

DAD is built around making that portfolio, getting better at creative thinking and preparing to enter the advertising industry.

What makes Denver Ad School different from other portfolio schools?

DAD combines an intensive 15-month program, $27,000 total tuition, small cohorts, live online or Denver attendance, working creative instructors and a whole lot of briefs. DAD was also named the #1 portfolio school in North America at the 2026 Young Ones Student Awards.

But you shouldn’t choose a portfolio school based on what the school says about itself. Compare DAD with the other portfolio schools you’re considering →

Can I become a copywriter without going to portfolio school?

Yes, you can become an advertising copywriter without attending portfolio school. You can teach yourself, find collaborators, make spec campaigns, hunt down mentors and build a portfolio independently.

The reason people choose portfolio school is that doing all of those things alone is hard. DAD gives you the briefs, partners, deadlines, instructors, critique and structure to do it faster—and hopefully a whole lot better.

02

APPLYING

Do I need a college degree or advertising experience to apply?

No, you do not need a college degree or previous advertising experience to apply to DAD. You’re coming here to learn advertising, so it would be a little weird if we required you to already know how to do it.

We’re much more interested in your curiosity, taste, personality, interests and creative potential.

Do I need a portfolio to apply to Denver Ad School?

No, you do not need a polished advertising portfolio to apply to DAD. We ask for a few creative samples, but we deliberately don’t expect your work to already look professional. You’re applying because you want to get better.

We’re trying to understand the creative you could become, not grade the creative you happen to be today. See the entire DAD application →

What does DAD look for in a Copywriting applicant?

DAD looks for creative potential more than polished advertising skill. We like curious people with opinions, good taste, interesting interests and the kind of brain that notices things other people miss.

We also care about what you’d be like as a creative partner. Advertising is collaborative. Being talented is great. Being talented and someone other people actually want to make things with is better.

How do I know if I should be a copywriter or an art director?

Copywriters tend to be drawn toward language, storytelling, culture and how an idea sounds; art directors tend to be drawn toward visuals, design and how an idea looks. But both jobs are conceptual creative jobs first.

If you love ideas but aren’t sure which side fits you yet, that’s normal. Explore Art Direction, sit in on a class or talk to us before you apply.

When do new DAD cohorts start, and when should I apply?

New DAD Copywriting cohorts begin in the spring and fall. Exact application deadlines change with the calendar and are generally about a month before the next quarter accepting new students.

Because cohorts are small, there’s not much upside to waiting until the deadline. See current DAD dates and application deadlines →

How many students are in a DAD cohort?

DAD caps each incoming cohort at 16 students. Creative education works better when instructors actually know your work, you know the people around you and you can’t disappear into the back row of a 200-person lecture hall.

Can I visit a DAD class before I apply?

Yes, prospective students can sit in on a DAD class before making a decision. Seeing the work, students, instructors and critique process in action is one of the easiest ways to figure out whether the school feels right for you.

Schedule a DAD class visit →

03

THE PROGRAM

What does an advertising copywriter actually do?

An advertising copywriter comes up with creative ideas and figures out how brands should communicate them. That can mean commercials, scripts, headlines, social ideas, brand voices, names, billboards, stunts, experiences and entire campaigns.

Copywriters usually work closely with art directors, which means the job is as much about having ideas as it is about writing words. Sometimes the best copywriting idea barely contains any copy at all.

Do I have to already be a great writer?

No, you do not need to already be a professional-level writer to start learning advertising copywriting. You should like words and want to get better with them, but great copywriting is also about observations, ideas, culture, problem-solving, humor, empathy and understanding what people care about.

We’ll work on the writing. We’re also teaching you how to think.

What’s the difference between an advertising copywriter and a content writer?

An advertising copywriter is primarily a conceptual creative, while a content writer is usually focused on creating informational or editorial content. Advertising copywriters develop campaigns, concepts, scripts, headlines, brand voices and other ideas designed to solve a communication or business problem.

The job is usually done in partnership with an art director rather than alone with a blank document.

Do copywriters need to know how to design?

Copywriters do not need to be art directors, but modern copywriters do need to know how to communicate an idea visually. You’ll make decks, present campaigns, collaborate with art directors and eventually build a portfolio.

You don’t need to arrive at DAD as a designer. We just don’t want your brilliant idea trapped forever inside a Google Doc.

How long does it take to become a copywriter at DAD?

DAD’s Copywriting program is five quarters, or about 15 months. During that time you move from foundational creative thinking and writing into campaigns, scripts, social ideas, stunts, portfolio development and preparing to get hired.

Finishing the calendar is not the goal. Becoming good enough to compete for creative jobs is.

What is the weekly schedule at Denver Ad School?

DAD classes run Monday through Thursday and can take place in the morning, afternoon or evening. The program is designed as a full-time workload, so class time is only part of your week.

You’ll also spend time concepting, writing, meeting with partners, responding to feedback, revising work and preparing presentations outside of class.

Can I work a job while attending DAD?

Some DAD students work part-time or flexible jobs, but the program itself should be treated as a full-time commitment. A traditional nine-to-five job can be difficult to maintain because classes may happen in the morning, afternoon or evening and your creative partners need you to actually be available to work with them.

Can I attend Denver Ad School online?

Yes, DAD’s full Copywriting program can be completed online. Online does not mean watching prerecorded lessons by yourself. Classes happen live, critiques happen live and you work with actual classmates and creative partners in real time.

Online and Denver students follow the same program, expectations and goal: leaving with a professional creative portfolio.

Is the online DAD program different from attending in Denver?

No, DAD’s online and Denver programs use the same curriculum and are built around the same standards. Both include live instruction, critique, creative partnerships and portfolio development.

The biggest difference is where you happen to be sitting while you do the work.

How much work will I make at DAD?

Copywriting students can expect to work through 60 creative briefs during the program. Not every brief becomes a portfolio piece, and that’s the point. You get better at ideas by making lots of them, getting feedback, throwing some away and making better ones.

What equipment and software do Copywriting students need?

Copywriting students need a reliable laptop and access to Adobe Creative Suite. You don’t need to arrive with a studio full of equipment. You do need a computer capable of handling the work you’ll make, present and eventually put into your portfolio.

04

MONEY + LOGISTICS

How much does Denver Ad School cost?

The full DAD Copywriting program costs $27,000 in tuition. The tuition is the same whether you attend online or in Denver.

See current DAD tuition and funding information →

Does DAD offer payment plans, loans or scholarships?

Yes, DAD offers flexible ways to pay tuition. Students can pay the full $27,000 tuition in one payment or divide it into five quarterly payments of $5,400.

DAD also works with private lending partners for students who qualify. Scholarships are offered occasionally, so after applying, ask us what scholarship opportunities are currently available.

See DAD payment and funding options →

Is Denver Ad School accredited, and can I use FAFSA?

Denver Ad School is not nationally accredited, so students cannot use federal FAFSA loans to pay DAD tuition. Instead, DAD is approved and regulated by the Colorado Department of Higher Education’s Division of Private Occupational Schools.

Students who need financing can explore DAD’s private lending partners and other available funding options. Read more about tuition, accreditation and financing →

Can international students attend Denver Ad School?

International students may be able to attend DAD online, but DAD cannot currently sponsor student visas. That means we cannot bring international students to Denver through a student-visa program.

If you live outside the United States and your time zone allows you to attend live classes on a schedule comparable to North America, the online program may still be an option.

Am I too old for portfolio school?

No, you are probably not too old for portfolio school. Most DAD students are around 21–25, but we also have students in their 30s who are switching careers and deciding they want to do something more creative.

Your future creative director is considerably more interested in your portfolio than your birth year.

05

AFTER DAD

What will be in my Copywriting portfolio when I graduate?

Your graduating Copywriting portfolio should contain your strongest professional-level creative ideas. That may include integrated campaigns, commercials, scripts, social ideas, stunts, experiences, headlines, brand thinking and work that doesn’t fit neatly into any one category.

The goal isn’t to preserve every assignment you ever made. It’s to build a tight portfolio that makes a creative director want to meet you.

Does Denver Ad School help students find copywriting jobs?

Yes, preparing students to compete for advertising jobs is a major part of DAD’s program. Students work on portfolio presentation, how to approach agencies, interviewing, networking and the process of turning their student work into an actual job search.

No school can guarantee exactly when or where an individual student will be hired. We can make getting you ready to compete for those jobs a major part of what you spend 15 months doing.

Where do advertising copywriters work?

Advertising copywriters work at ad agencies, in-house creative departments, brands, creative studios, startups and other companies that need people who can turn business problems into creative ideas. A common first job is Junior Copywriter, but creative careers can eventually lead to senior copywriting, creative direction, freelance work and plenty of paths that don’t fit neatly on a business card.

Will AI replace advertising copywriters?

AI will change copywriting, but learning how to use AI is different from replacing the human creative behind the work. Taste, judgment, cultural understanding, curiosity, collaboration and knowing whether an idea is actually interesting still matter.

DAD teaches students to use AI as a creative tool without handing over the part of the job that requires human thinking.

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